Perhaps Not My CBest

My CBest scores have arrived via email. On the reading section, I received a perfect score. In math, I earned a 90%, which is not too shabby for someone who hasn’t taken a math course since high school. Just when I’m starting to feel confident in my “general proficiency,” I notice my writing score: 41/80. As a point of clarification, a 41 is the minimum passing score. Had I done even one point worse, I would have been made to take the test again. Apparently, the state of California has deemed my writing skills just barely sufficient, which is quite a humbling experience for someone considering a career in writing. Good thing I decided to pursue teaching!

I’ve heard that a lot of strong writers have similar problems when taking this test. Since they’re grading at a ninth grade level, when the graders don’t see topic and concluding sentences in the right places, they dock you points immediately. If only I had known I needed to dumb it down to teach. For one essay topic that prompted we write about a favorite food and the feelings you have when you eat it, I reconstructed a creative non-fiction piece on fluffernutter sandwiches. My college professor must have been misguided to give it an A.

At any rate, I realize that I owe my blog readers an apology for apparently being so illegible. I’ll soon switch over to a LiveJournal account to better suit my incoherent, unpunctuated style.